Attention, Please

If God were trying to get our attention, what would He use to do it?

In the Old Testament, He used drought, famine, and enemy attacks to get the Israelites to come back to their true God.  Israel was famous for abandoning their Glory for gods that demanded even as much as the life of their babies.  And God had to repeatedly use extreme measures to get their attention.

As He says, "Has any nation ever traded its gods for new ones, even though they are not gods at all? Yet my people have exchanged their glorious God for worthless idols!" Jer. 2:11

America began as a Christian country.  There have been a number of revivals along the way which kept God in the forefront of our nation's thoughts and policies.  In the 1960's, America kicked God out of school and allowed our unborn babies to be offered up to the god of convenience. 

Since then, I have seen in my lifetime the weather become more extreme, progressively become more severe.  There are earthquakes in unusual places with bigger earthquakes in places that often have them.  Now drought - and accompanying food shortages - are coupled with a crushed economy.  We are at the mercy of foreign nations (See Ezekiel 7:21 and Hosea 8:7) for energy.  I've heard that most of Nevada is owned by people from other countries.  That is not considered to be a blessing according to God's Word.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour. Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up."  Hosea 8:7  Here is both drought and foreign occupation.  Even if foreigners were not to literally take over the country, we are so in debt to other governments that everything we produce is owed to someone else.

We've been attacked at our embassies outside of the country and internally as well. 

I see the nation's economy being manipulated in such a way that our finances will utterly fail and the only way to redeem it will be to come up with a new currency and probably to join a one-world government.  Our country's economic situation is no accident. 

I can only see two ways of looking at this.  Either God is trying to get our attention and call us back to Himself, or we are on the edge of the end-times. 

Show me, if you can, where I'm wrong.

God go with you,

Kathi

Joseph and Judah

One time I was teaching the story of Joseph reconciling with his brothers and I choked up because I finally got a picture of exactly what had happened.

When the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, Reuben wanted to save him and send him home.  The other brothers got rid of Joseph before Reuben returned from his errand and the deed became irreversible.

For twenty years, the brothers watched as their father Jacob went into mourning and never came out of it.  Thereby hangs the tale. 

The family, as twisted as it was before Joseph disappeared, became worse.  Benjamin was never allowed out of Daddy's sight.  This restriction made Benjamin both rebellious and spoiled.  (See Judges 19 - 21 to see how this passed down through the generations.)  He hadn't been at fault for Joseph's leaving, but he bore the worst of the consequences.  I'm making a guess here, but I'm betting the brothers felt bad about taking away Benjamin's full brother, and they gave him extra presents and paid more attention to him than they would have under other circunstances.

The older brothers carried around the guilt of their deed and the lies that followed for nearly TWENTY YEARS.  They watched their father shrink into himself as if the spirit had been sucked out of him completely and saw him hang onto Benjamin the way babies hang onto their "blankie".  Nothing they did changed it.  No entertainment, no storytelling around the campfire, no gift they could give, nothing helped.  Imagine the shared silent glances between the brothers when they caught Dad quietly wiping his eyes with the back of his hand as some memory went through his mind about Joseph and his mother, both gone.

After the first trip to Egypt, the brothers knew they would have to pry Benjamin out from under Daddy's arm.  Reuben first told Jacob, "If I don't bring him back to you alive and in one piece, you can kill my two boys." 

Finally Judah guaranteed Benjamin's life by saying he would be personally responsible for Benjamin's safety.  He, Judah, would forever bear the blame before his father if anything happened to the youngest brother.  Benjamin at this point was no baby.  He had to have been at least 30 since Joseph was about 37 by now.  But Dad wouldn't acknowledge his maturity.

So finally, all the brothers make the trip to Egypt.  Joseph treats them like honored guests with a big feast, loads them up with plenty of grain, and sends them on their way only to have them stopped under a charge of theft.  The item in question is in Benjamin's sack of grain and it looks for all the world like Jacob is about to lose Rachel's only other child forever.

All of the brothers go back to face the Pharoah's right-hand man and plead for their youngest brother. 

This is the part that finally dawned on me.  Judah has watched his father deteriorate for all of these years and it has caused him damage.  The guilt and the lies have eaten at his heart for two decades and he can't take it anymore.  Judah says this, "Please take me prisoner and send this one home to his father.  I guaranteed his safety."  Then I can see tears in Judah's eyes and his voice breaks, "Please don't make me watch what would happen to my father if Benjamin doesn't come home."  (Gen. 44:34)

In the beginning, the brothers thought they were getting rid of their thorn in the flesh when they sent Joseph away.  But see where they ended up.  Their scheme broke their father, broke their family, broke them. 

"Please don't make me watch what would happen to my father..."  He couldn't live with the consequences anymore.  

Even though God turned the whole situation around, gave them food in a time of famine, saved the life of the whole nation, promoted Joseph for his faithfulness, and restored joy to Jacob in the end, there was still a huge price to pay for what they did.  I'm betting they frequently thought,"Those two silver pieces we each got didn't begin to make up for the results."

God go with you.

Kathi

Disreputable

Our guest pastor today was from a church called "The Alley".  His ministry is to drug addict, alcoholics, street children, and ex-felons.  He tends to stop into bars and play a few licks with the band because, as he says, he goes to his congregation rather than waiting for them to come to him.

John the Baptist, as the son of a priest, was supposed to wash frequently, wear clean white linen, and show up in the temple to offer sacrifices in the prescribed way.  He did none of those things.  John wore camel's hair and leather.  He ate locusts and wild honey.  He preached to Romans and the backwash of the people until the scribes and Pharisees came down to see what he was up to.  And then he told them what he thought of their "establishment" ways.  He baptized people in a big muddy river.  He did not do "what he was supposed to do".

Jesus was the same.  If he was supposed to be the Messiah by "churchy" standards, He certainly didn't live up to their their expectations.  His first miracle was turning water into wine to keep the party going.  He hung out with tax collectors, thieves, prostitutes, adulterers, and other disreputable folks.  He was three days late for His best friend's funeral.  He took for disciples the unlearned (by the religious people's standards), a liar and at least one thief.  James and John, the sons of thunder, today would have been part of a motorcycle gang.  It seems as if Peter and Andrew had some kind of running feud going - "How often do I have to forgive my brother?  Up to seven times?"  What a bunch to have to deal with on a day-to-day basis!

Yet Jesus loved them all, struggled to show them how to love, how to forgive, how to be forgiven.  He never tired of giving them God's best.  He told them stories that they could relate to in simple terms.  He could have commanded the king's palace, yet He slept on the ground, bathed in streams, wore homespun, and smelled like the ordinary people who gathered around Him.

It doesn't hurt us church folk to remember how our Teacher loved the unlovable and reached out for them to snatch as many of them from the enemy as He could.  God looks at the heart.  We shouldn't decide how to treat people by what their outsides look like.

God help us all to be more like Jesus.

The Second (or Third) Commandment

"You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."  (Exodus 20:7)

For fifty and some years, I never heard this commandment refer to anything other than cursing and swearing.  Maybe that is part of it, but I believe there is a great deal more to this statement.

If we take on God's name and call ourselves Christian, we'd better not take the name lightly.  We have to act the way God would if He were visible in our neighborhoods.

Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  (Matt. 7:21)  The people who hear this will be surprised.

For instance,  two neighborhood young people go into a grocery store.  One of them goes to church and Sunday school every week and calls himself a Christian.  The other doesn't.  The church-goer takes a pack of gum, stuffs it in his pocket, and walks out without paying for it.  What does his neighbor think of God and His people now? 

A young man and young woman go to Bible college, both professing to be committed Christians on a life mission to serve the Lord.  The young man seduces the young woman.  She finds she's pregnant.  He abandons her.  She gets an abortion and turns her back on God, never to trust Him or anyone else ever again.  What reward should the young man get?

Several "pious" women in a church spread rumors and gossip about everyone in town including other church members.  Three women, whose reputation has been shredded by this clique, leave the church never to darken its doors again. 

Telling lies, cheating on a tax return, speeding down the highway with a Christian sticker on the back bumper, making unkind gestures at a stop light with that same bumper sticker, taking books out of the library that could NEVER be shared with Jesus...  all of these actions are compared against the Name we claim to carry.

Count the cost.  If you cannot be what you claim to be, then either quit claiming it or change.  A real relationship with the Lord sets your mind on whatever is pure and true and noble, everything that is excellent and praiseworthy (Phil. 4:8).  Be careful not to take the family Name in vain.  We are what unbelievers see of God.  We need to make Him beautiful and wonderful in front of the world.